6 People Who Took Overprotective Parenting Way Too Far

#3. Parents Are Babying Their Kids Through College, Job Interviews

There is apparently a new wave of parents who see no reason why their practice of hovering over their offspring should end when they move away to college. One parent, despite having a full-time job, schedules every hour of her college-age sons' lives, in addition to monitoring their personal email accounts and bank account balances. She obtains copies of every syllabus and emails them their homework assignments for every class, which they never miss because she gives them wake-up calls every morning. So we suppose it would be kind of like having a fancy personal assistant, only one that guarantees you will never have sex.

Getty"Don't give me that look. You'll be asking me to do this when you're 25."

And it's unfair to write this off as the obsession of one overzealous parent -- hiring managers say they're running into applicants whose parents conducted the job search, as well as wrote and submitted the resume on their kid's behalf. Some of them then sit in on the interview itself and will actually attempt to negotiate salary and benefits on behalf of their children. For example, an HR manager received a call from the mother of an intern they had hired, informing her that her son deserved to be paid more because he was so talented. Not talented enough to negotiate his own salary, though, apparently.

The situation has gotten so bad that some companies now expect and make provisions for parental meddling (they find themselves having to recruit the parents of prospective employees as much as the employees themselves). A few at least draw the line at not allowing parents to sit in on job interviews, and presumably you find similar restrictions at, say, strip clubs.

#2. New York Parents Hire Tutors to Help Kids Cheat

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Professional tutors have always walked a fine line between empowering students to do better in school and actually doing the work for them. Wealthy parents in New York City have been caught hiring "tutors" to do just that -- complete their children's work for them. So concerned are they with being able to brag to their friends that Junior is attending Harvard that they couldn't care less if they literally buy his way in. Hey, the sooner the kids figure out how the real world works, the better.

One medical student tutored students from wealthy families and made over $150,000, which he used to put himself through school. He started off working for a standard tutoring agency, but the prospect of making tons of cash by doing unethical things like writing college entrance essays for students was too enticing to pass up. After all, if he didn't do it, someone else would. One mother, a college professor, hired him to "tutor" her son through high school. But once her son graduated and moved off to college, he promptly flunked out without his tutor's assistance.

This type of cheating isn't limited to the United States, either. The problem seems to be especially prevalent in China, where parents are so desperate for their children to succeed that they practically buy achievements for them. This presents a major problem for U.S. students who must compete with Chinese students for college admissions -- one research study shows that 50 percent of high school transcripts in China are falsified.

Via Craftkeys.comDon't they know you can just buy a fake diploma off the Internet?

#1. Parents Spend Thousands on Popularity Classes

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As crushing as it is for your kids to fail in the classroom or on the sports field, maybe nothing is worse than the sting of social rejection. But once again, there is no problem beyond the reach of intrusive parents willing to go the extra mile, which is why some of them are sending their little girls to coaches who will train them on how to be popular.

Sunday Tollefson, author and sorority rush expert, says, "It's like speed dating meets interviewing meets beauty pageant meets upscale academic summer camp, complete with a counselor." Note the "beauty pageant" part of this equation. We suppose we should give her credit for being honest about the importance of looking good -- one study showed that sororities are much more likely to accept thin women as members than those who were less thin (note: not necessarily overweight).

Some parents will spend upwards of $8,000 to send their daughters to a two-week sorority prep school. There they will learn to minimize the chance that they will ever embarrass themselves socially or come to believe that getting an education is somehow more important than being pretty and liked.

Getty"I'm sorry, I've been instructed not to speak."

Don't get us wrong -- being in a popular sorority is the ultimate in social networking, as sororities have their tentacles buried deep in the business world. While most sororities have GPA requirements, grades are hardly the most important thing on your resume when you have Kappa Kappa Gamma next to your name. Thanks, Mom!